Garethx

We've had many threads on the definitions and semantics of the term. We have the fantastic media thread on the subject which continues to entertain and inform. I thought I'd start a thread for people to nominate one record which they view as the ultimate embodiment of the genre. I appreciate that these generic definitions are problematic and maybe unnecessary but hopefully this thread will give those who wonder what all the fuss is about an insight as to why fans of these records are so passionate about them. It would be great if contributors could limit themselves to ONE record: that which is in their eyes the ultimate example of the term. I'll start the ball rolling and nominate RICHARD CAITON "I'D LIKE TO GET NEAR YOU" on UP TIGHT I'll write a bit about exactly why I think it's the ultimate Crossover record a bit later, but I'm already looking forward to others' choices and am eager to see what, if any, consensus emerges. There are no wrong answers.

The beat ballad on Michelle "The Next Time She's Mine" often goes for money but surely apart from "I Wanna Be Free" and "Pneumonia" most of Joe Tex 45s are fairly cheap.

It sounds a lot like The Vibrations "Finding Out The Hard Way" on Okeh.

The other side, "Long Lonely Nights" is one of the very greatest of early deep soul records for me. A genre they helped define with "I Found A Love" but on this one the emotion is turned up to eleven: an absolutely brilliant, brilliant record. As others have noted very difficult to find in pristine condition these days.

Going off on a tangent now and probably for another thread but the type of seventies soul that seems to be most popular with younger audiences in Europe and beyond is actually the kind of disco-soul that Sam and Arthur kick-started the Modern Soul scene with in 1979-80. Witness the enduring and universal appeal of things like Timeless Legend, King Tutt, Emmanuel Taylor etc. Who would have thought those records would have the sheer longevity they've enjoyed?

The Ohio Players should not be underestimated by soul fans. The earlier material is the essence of 'funky soul' if you ask me. Their playing on things like the Hermon Hitson NY records, Gloria / Towanda Barnes, George Scott, Nate Adams, Lee Moses etc. is magnificent. A lot of their commercially successful albums of the 70s feature some tremendous falsetto ballads, so characterising them as Funky Rock is slightly simplistic in my view.

One thing strikes me about Rod's piece above and it reinforces my belief that the term itself came from the modern arm of the scene and that looking for that type of sound sprung from on the one hand the paucity of genuinely soulful new releases and the rise of the nascent House music phenomenon on the other. The Northern scene of the time was playing the 'Crossover' type of record quite seamlessly in the more upfront sets quite a while before the 'Xover' term was coined by folks on the modern scene. Think of late Stafford and its immediate aftermath: stuff like "Pyramid", the various Johnny Gilliam sides being played, Wilson Love, Margie Joseph "One More Chance", The Appointments on De-lite and Red Coach, and dozens more like them were all at least pretty popular and some were downright monsters. No-one seemed to question whether they were appropriate to play at allnighters. Crossover type sounds were always accepted anyway in my view. Returnees and revisionists would have us believe they were something grafted onto the Northern scene from outside but that was never really the case.

Also released on Boblo, Bobby Smith's Macon label which features some very rare and tasty southern soul. This 45 (as Razzy Bailey) actually shares the same label number (314) as the local release of Willy Wiley's "Just Be Glad" before King. I have no idea whether the Boblo release features The Neighborhood Kids, which as Sebastian says above, render the Aquarius release practically unlistenable to these ears.

Makes me wonder if there are any other potential Northern monsters produced by O.V. Wright. A great record.

Good points Kev. I think the price of many big Northern oldies makes them less attractive to other scenes, and the funk collectors likely to dip into the soul scene are well versed in what's 'old hat' anyway. Fryer's point about being listened to by the major players on the soul scene is interesting and maybe taps into a wider point of the funk scene not existing in the real world away from the virtual one. I hope he can appreciate being listened to by those who are not 'big names' also. One of the great strengths of the rare soul scene in its traditional sense is there are many knowledgeable people outside of the big deejaying names and that traditionally we have not been swayed by the cult of the celebrity deejay.

Hi Jock. Re-reading my post you're absolutely right. If people dislike Funk or midtempo soul that is, of course, their absolute right. I should have said that I have a problem with those people stating that such sounds 'cannot be Northern Soul' as if that were a musical genre in its own right: it never has been and never will be, which is what I was trying to say in the first couple of paragraphs. It's also a misrepresentation that all Crossover records are set at a snail's pace. Everyone who has cited Rod's seminal Crossover article in Voices is correct, and re-reading that again it's telling that the records he reviews in it cover a variety of tempos, production styles and flavours. Some were funky, others sultry. Some had strings, many others didn't. Some incorporated jazz chords but that wasn't necessarily typical. Group vocals were there, but also solo singers. Some were decidedly pacey, whereas others were definitely ballads. Like Northern it was a broad church. One thing to bear in mind with Crossover as defined by Rod was that it was probably more about the then 'Modern' scene embracing the older sounds than the Northern scene discovering records which were texturally different. We must remember that at the time (the late 80s) most soul as played by the modern scene of the time was of the newly released variety, be it on major labels or indies. By '87 I for one had started to question the wisdom of buying new releases which were of a much lower quality than what had been available only three or four years previous to that. Major label soul had blanded out to infinity, stuck in the rut of churning out endless clones of Luther Vandross and Anita Baker. Independent soul was sounding increasingly cheap and shoddy, plus the seven inch single was dying as a format. When faced with the prospect of buying much of this as cassette or CD singles I said to myself (and I couldn't have been alone): enough is enough. Older-sounding music seemed a lot more attractive than it might have done in 1983-84, which I think of as a small golden age (maybe the last one) for real US soul music. I think in London we were relatively lucky in that venues there had kind of embraced the Crossover philosophy some years previously anyway: people like Ian Clark and Randy Cozens were very influential on a lot of the younger collectors in that they had long championed an all-encompassing approach as to what you could possibly play at (for want of a better term) Rare Soul Clubs. Steve G. in his capacity as editor of Black Beat was also hugely influential in covering a very wide variety of soul music, new and old. I still tried to buy as many of 'Guy's Goodies' as I did the new releases of the time. Like a lot of people I went to Modern events and Northern events alike in the capital: increasingly the same kinds of records seemed to be big on both. The newly-coined 'Crossover' records seemed to fit a mood that was there for many of us anyway. Sean Hampsey is right when he says that we should now be mature enough as collectors and consumers to dispense with these unhelpful labels anyway. I see events like 'Just Soul' or 'Soul Or Nothing' and consider them to be a good way forward. The recent SON in Manchester was musically very diverse, but almost uniformly interesting and (not least) entertaining. It's intriguing to see people like Adam Leaver of George M playing examples of soul music that may have started life being appreciated on another scene to people from a more traditional Northern Soul background. Collector/DJs like these don't seem to have much of the baggage associated with the more traditional NS scene and I think that's healthy. This scene will of necessity be smaller and its natural habitat will not be a dusty ballroom with a vast wooden dancefloor. The latter environment is still valid too. Classic oldies really still make sense in the more traditional setting and you'll never beat the buzz of a heaving allnighter at peak time. Others will disagree with me and are free to do so.

Pretty Purdie & The Playboys "Song For Aretha". A magnificent and almost unique piece of music.

To be honest aren't all of these definitions slightly deranged? They are scene buzzwords placed on records which often have scant relevance to anything other than the type of venue the record can be played in, which in itself is a can of worms. What's a 'Northern' record? The Crow is a Northern Record, so is Charles Sheffield on Excello. New World on Polydor is a Northern Record, as is Jimmy Ricks on Festival. What do they have in common as records: very little other than they have been played at venues which have gone under the moniker "Northern Soul" at some time in the past. They have been played at Northern Soul clubs and a lot of the club-goers have danced to them and liked them. This has always been the case: the scene has always musically been a broad church style and tempo wise, and if anyone denies that they are denying history and being disingenuous. What does The Players IV on Knoll have in common with Eddie Parker on Aware? Practically nothing save for the fact that they have both been popular at Northern Soul venues. If you were to tell someone with no knowledge of the scene that they were generically the same they would doubtless be very puzzled. The term 'Crossover' certainly helped record dealers shift some records they previously found difficult to catergorise, but in itself it's actually a nonsense term: the common denominators linking records are often miles apart: the thing which unites them is suitability for playing in a certain environment by certain deejays to particular audiences. Saying these records have no place on the Northern scene is fraught with philosophical difficulty. Think of some of the very biggest 'Northern' records of the last decade: Montclairs on Arch, Joseph Webster on Crow, Vanguards on Lamp, Delegates of Soul on Uplook, Ellipsis on Briarmede, Ascots on American Playboy and so on. All could be termed 'Crossover' and most of those started at 'Crossover' venues played by 'Crossover' deejays. Are they esoteric plodders guaranteed to send nighter-goers to the bar/ the carpark etc. No. Evidence tells us that they are all popular and make a lot of people want to dance. Whether they have all outstayed their welcome and become 'divvies' records' or 'peasants' sounds' is another question for another topic. With hindsight in the decades to come I'm sure all will be looked back on fondly and be seen as the classics they are. Are they materially different to what has gone before: emphatically no. They have much in common with records popular in practically all past phases of the scene. Whenever I've made this point before people often say that catergorisation is important for promoters to use in their marketing material. It's important for record dealers to use in their sales literature. I've often thought it would be better for record buyers to be given honest sales lists: good records on the one hand; crap on another page. One of the good things about the internet is that you can often hear an 'unknown' record before you buy it: work out whether it works for you and make your decision to purchase based on that. As a younger person it used to infuriate me buying a record blind from a list after being told it was 'blinding crossover/northern/deep' or whatever stylistic argot was then flavour of the month only to actually find it was a piece of crap which no generic classification could or would save. Most records ever made in whatever genre are actually fairly poor. The trick is to concentrate on the ones which aren't: those with a spark of originality or which exhibit excellence or talent in some aspect of their execution. Promoters shouldn't need to catergorise in terms of their venues: a cursory look at the deejaying lineup should be enough for punters to make up their minds about whether the night is likely to be enjoyable for them personally. If you're unsure then try it, you might just like it. That's the way it used to be: we weren't all born experts. One of the bad things about the internet is that it gives some people the impression they might be an expert or have some moral authority without having gone out there and actually experienced something. Marketing has replaced substance. In that the scene is just a microcosm of the wider world. I wish people would stop stating 'I hate funk / I hate crossover' or whatever generic term they have an aversion to that week. It's more realistic and more honest to say "that's a bad record" (but if you do that state why you think it's a bad record) or "I don't like the deejay who made that big" or "the promoter of the club where that's a popular sound won't book me." etc.

The J.J. Barnes / Steve Mancha "Rare Stamps" lp on Volt.

That's The O'Jays! The flyer in your avatar does appear to be the Kelly Brothers.

Robert Kelly's solo recording on One Way, "My Time To Win" is an excellent early 70s Chicago ballad with a beat. If you admire records like Otis Clay "You Hurt Me For The Last Time" this is right in the same bag. He was an excellent singer.

What is the current price for The Superbs "On A Day When It's Raining" Dor 753? Always thought this had the potential to be a big record in the right hands: perfect California soul.

The b-side "My Heart Remembers" is probably my favourite Willie Tee recording. Sheer class that I've often thought worthy of spins as an ender. That lot of four contained a real bargain for the lucky buyer as the Nola demo seems to be in very good nick. Often these are quite badly beaten up.

A great song. The version by Jackie Ross on Fountain is very nice too, as is Dusty Springfield's. I'm afraid I don't know who the backing singers are on Al Wilson's version, but LA session singers of the time around the studios involved would have included names like Merry Clayton, Clydene Jackson and Brenda & Patrice Holloway among others.

His version of "I've Been Trying" is indeed fantastic Andy. Could be spun in the more enlightened crossover rooms as it's actually pretty danceable.

Not seen a Bobby Boyd for sale for a few years.

You Knock Me Out is not on any album. It was only locally released, that is not distributed by Atlantic. I think it's currently under-priced. Interesting that it's published by Redwal, Otis Redding and Alan Walden's publishing company. I'll have to check but I can't recall any other of his songs being in this publishing arrangement.

Totally over the top, in my opinion. It's certainly not a bad version but I can't imagine that this is in any way a rare or in-demand record. This was the guy who later appeared in the terrible ITV soap opera "Connie" by the way.

There are loads of threads on this record on the forum. The consensus seems to be that it's actually impossible to definitively state that one issue came before the other. I think the price premium should be decided by which colour label you'd prefer to look at while the disc is spinning around.

More dreadful French Canadian disco: "Summer Breeze" by Baizer. Was played at Stafford but I can't think it was played anywhere since. I found a copy in Reckless in Soho for 10p.